SWW / Southwest
Weekend of Witness took place 17 & 18 November 2007 in Tucson
and at the gates of Ft Huachua, AZ - home of the Army
Intelli- gence Center and school for interrogators in the war on
terror. Ft Huachuca is also where curriculum and instruction
design is developed for the notorious WHINSEC - Western
Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly the School
of the Americas and bluntly described by many as the School of
the Assassins.

John Fife is now Reverend Emeritus of Southside
Presbyterian Church in Tucson after leading that congregation for
many years going back to the 1980s and the Sancuary Movement. In
his address at the SWW Teach In at Pima Community College (thanks to Dean Muir) he
details the nature of the policy of torture and condemns those that
initiated, participated in & perpetuate these gross crimes against
US and international law - indeed, against humanity.

Dr Kathy Norgard is a psychologist who has
been focused in recent years on the effects of torture not only on
victims, but perpetrators, witnesses and the society in which these
degenerate offenses are committed. Her work is closely associated
with support and recovery of torture victims throughout the world - a
world in which 3 out of 4 countries practice torture on those they
percieve as enemies or threats... usually their own people struggling
for self determination.

Rick Ufford-Chase
conducted the Teach In at Pima Community College, additional activities
Southside Presbyterian and following that, led an all night vigil at
the Tucson Federal Building. He was founder and for many years
the Executive Director of Border Links. He has also recently
served as moderator of the 216th Assembly of the Presbyterian Church
and is now ED of Presbyterian Peace Fellowship.

SWW is an effort involving faith, human
rights and pro peace activists to bring public attention to the
indefensible and increasing use of torture as a tool of policy by the
Bush administration and public pressure upon our cowardly and corrupt
congressional representatives to uphold their oaths of office and
enforce accountability on an executive branch gone mad. 2007
marks the 4th year that Tucson based activists and others have brought
their protest to the gates of Ft Huachuca in support of the long
established and growing movement spearheaded by School of the Americas Watch
to shut down the School of the Assassins in Ft Benning.

Last year, Fathers Vitale & Kelly
"crossed the line" to deliver a letter of protest and demand to end
torture to Army Intelligence Center commander, General Barbara Fast -
that same General Fast that was head of all intelligence operations in
Iraq at the time of the Abhu Ghraib debacle. They were promptly
arrested and are now serving five month sentences in federal
penitentiaries as prisoners of conscience. RFS! taped the
2006 events and the program can be viewed here.

This year three activists - Father Jerry
Zawada, Betsy Lamb, and Grant County resident Mary
Burton Riseley - similarly crossed the line to demand an end to
torture in our names and those of all Americans. They have been
similarly dispatched to Federal Court and both Lamb & Zawada are
being held without bail as a consequence of having conditions
prohibiting their actions placed upon them from other pending cases.

RFS! taped The Teach In, Procession &
Vigil and protest. More programs on SWW will be posted in coming
weeks. Please visit again.